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As the saying goes, every challenge presents an opportunity. At the 2023 CENTR Annual General Meeting, the Chair of the CENTR Board of Directors, Barbara Povše, took this to heart and instead of dwelling on the challenges faced in 2022, highlighted the achievements and successes of the CENTR community in the past year.

Despite long-standing data protection compliance discussions by the ICANN community since the advent of the GDPR, and the finalisation of the NIS 2 Directive that was a direct EU response to deal with the “unintended” consequences of the GDPR on the WHOIS, there is still no end in sight to the debate over how to reconcile the multistakeholder model with legislative obligations put forward across national jurisdictions. The GDPR’s implementation is still a work in progress, while the NIS 2 accuracy obligations applicable to all registries operating in the EU are still considered to be too abstract to be able to have an impact on ICANN policy development. One is clear: TLD registries must respect national and regional legislation, irrespective of what is happening at ICANN. 

During ICANN76, even remote attendees could feel the winds of change blowing through the organisation. In her opening speech, ICANN Chair Tripti Sinha emphasised that ICANN has reached an inflection point and will need constructive collaboration to make progress on longstanding issues. With WSIS+20 approaching, there is little time left to prove that the multistakeholder model can deliver on the promises made in 2005. These include in particular references to cybersecurity coordination (#40) and the fight against spam (#41) of the Internet Governance chapter of the Tunis Agenda for the Information Society. 

In a nutshell: The European Parliamentary committees have finalised their work on the GI protection of crafts/industrial products proposal and the EUID regulation, and expressed criticism over the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. The European Commission published the European Digital Identity Wallet Architecture and Reference Framework, and a proposal for Gigabit Infrastructure Act, while seeking public views for the upcoming GDPR enforcement review and the future of the connectivity sector. The EU is also revising its insolvency law and has included domain registries in its scope. The Swedish presidency proposed a list of critical products under the CRA. The EDPS is piloting the use of Free and Open Source Software. ENISA published its multiannual single-programming report for 2023-2025. The Leipzig Regional Court ruled in favour of Sony against Quad9.

From 16-17 February, CENTR’s Legal and Regulatory Working Group, that brings together ccTLD legal experts from all over Europe and beyond, met in Brussels for a day and a half of discussions, focusing in particular on cybersecurity and the upcoming implementation of the NIS 2 Directive. The group welcomed guest speakers from the European Commission and ENISA, and focused on the impact of NIS 2 on digital infrastructure actors, such as TLD registries, and the role of the EU institutions/agencies within the implementation phase.

In this blogpost CENTR's Policy Director talks about the ongoing GI reform, explaining the differences between GIs, trademarks and domain names. She focuses on how the proposed GI reform will impact domain names and argues that there is a clear lack of evidence in the arguments supporting the proposed changes, as well as questioning EUIPO's competence in this area. Finally, the potential impact of including gTLDs in the scope of this reform is touched on at the end of the article.

CENTR, the association of European country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registries, such as .at for Austria or .es for Spain, is looking for a consultant to take on the role of CENTR European TLD ISAC (Information Sharing and Analysis Centre) Coordinator.

In a nutshell: EU ambassadors and LIBE endorsed a political agreement on e-Evidence. Europol and Eurojust published a situation report on access to electronic evidence by law enforcement and judicial authorities in 2022. IMCO adopted its opinion on the proposal for a regulation on GI protection for craft and industrial products, while JURI adopted its opinion on the proposal for a regulation on GI protection for agricultural products. MEPs in AGRI expressed concerns over EUIPO’s increased competence within the GI reform. The EDPB adopted reports on cookie banners and the use of cloud services by the public sector. A 2022 consumer protection “sweep” identified an increase of dark patterns within web shops.

On Thursday 26 January 2023, members of the CENTR Administrative and Marketing Working Groups and of the LACTLD Commercial Working Group joined together online for the first time to discuss registrar accreditation.

In a nutshell: Sweden is holding the Presidency of the Council of the EU in the first half of the year. The geographical indications reform is moving through the clogs of the EU legislative machine, with the Council being slightly more ahead with the discussions on the crafts and industrial products. The NIS 2 Directive entered into force, paving the way towards its upcoming implementation phase in the Member States. Member States are divided over the provisional agreement on the e-Evidence package, while the European Parliament endorsed the ratification of the Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention. The European Commission is expected to reform the Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation.